Wanderlust

9- The Nightmare

Crash!

I was woken by a loud bang and my first thought was that we were caught by the police again and I needed to think of a plan to get us free. My mind started racing for a plan, but I was beginning to come up short. However, when I sprang to my feet, I saw no police sirens through the windows and there was no banging or yelling outside of the door.

I clutched my racing heart, trying to calm down the speedy rate of its beat and then looked around the room to find the real source of the sound. I know that I wasn’t crazy, something had to of caused that crash sound because it woke me up.

My eyes finally landed on my wallet that was now sprawled out on the floor, but I know that it was originally placed on the nightstand before I’d fallen asleep last night. I looked up to Thomas and noticed that he was the one who knocked it off of the nightstand, but he wasn’t awake- he was thrashing around his bed with his eyes screwed shut, making it obvious that he was still asleep and apparently, not a happy camper.

His face was contorted into one of what looked like pain as he was whispering to himself things that I couldn’t understand as his head was thrashing back and forth and his hands were clutching the blankets so hard that his knuckles were white. He was holding onto them as if he was afraid of letting them go, as if they’d disappear forever. His forehead was covered in a thick layer of sweat and he looked like he was in pure agony. It was obvious that he was having a nightmare, and a terrible one at that.

“Thomas!” I said in a loud panic, trying to wake him from his nightmare that seemed to be getting worse as his whispers turned into incoherent mumbles and it seemed as if there was nothing I could do to stop it.  

“Thomas!” I repeated, getting louder, but he still wasn’t waking up. This was painful to watch, just the terror-filled expression on his face was enough to brim my eyes with tears and I was desperately trying to wake him up.

“Lily!” He yelled in a throaty, desperate-sounding voice. I jumped about a mile into the air at the sudden boom of sound that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t know who Lily was, and I had a feeling that Thomas didn’t want me to know who she was because if he did then he would have told me earlier, but once I heard the name escape his lips, my eyes fell to the tattoo on his left arm. That’s what it said- it spelled Lily in really cursive and fancy lettering. I couldn’t understand it before because of the intricacy of the design, but now I can see it. The first L looped around the other three letters as if it was protecting them and there were thorns covering the letters as if they were vines from a rose. That’s all the tattoo said, though, there was no more writing, just a delicate rose blooming from the top of the letters, hovering above the one simple word.

His legs started moving under the blanket, thrashing about violently like he was running, and he continued to mumble incoherently, getting angrier and angrier with his movements and with his sleeping voice. His blanket was being thrown around as if he was a washing machine, throwing the pathetic fabric around in a big, tangled mess.

“Thomas!” I screeched, desperately trying to wake him up from his painful dream. This time, I threw a scratchy pillow at his face for added affect to get him to wake up and to end whatever terrible memory he seemed to be reliving.

This time, it worked and his eyes shot open as he bolted up from the bed, sitting straight up. He was sweating heavily, his forehead glistening with the thick layer of moisture, and his wild eyes looked frantic and scared, two things I’d never thought I would ever see from that boy. He was always so calm and brave, he kept me brave. The antithesis of what I was seeing in that very moment. I hurried over to the side of his bed and sat down beside him, only wanting to help him get rid of these emotions because, honestly, they were terrifying me.